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Cluster crunchers take the biscuit

WHEN computer scientists at Virginia Tech’s Terascale Computing Facility needed a new supercomputer this year, they quickly realised they would have to cut a few corners. “We talked to all the usual suspects,” says associate director Kevin Shinpaugh. “But it was all out of our price range.”

So they turned their attention to a less obvious piece of hardware&colon; Apple’s Power Mac G5 desktop computer. If they could lash hundreds of these machines together, they reasoned, they might be able to build a formidable number cruncher at an affordable price.